Games, Gamers, & Gaming: "Gateway Games, Up a Level"
Jan 15, 2011In my previous column, “Gateway—or, ‘Bait’—Games” (LJ 11/15/10), I recommended basic games to intrigue apprehensive beginning players. Here, I discuss more complex games, for players up for more of a challenge.
Board games rule
Electronic games, with their visible coolness factor, are the darlings of gaming programs in libraries. But less costly board games remain easier to justify to stakeholders; they’re also more popular and prevalent than you might think. A study by Syracuse University iSchool professor Scott Nicholson shows that board games get nearly four times as much use as console games in a library setting.
Strategic selection
The below selection of award-winning, mostly tile-based board games are all worthy acquisitions for any library. Interesting enough to satisfy those wanting a challenging experience from their initiation into gaming, all are relatively quick and easy to play and learn and have considerable repeat playability. For those who steadfastly prefer electronics, versions of all these games are available online and on platforms including PCs, consoles, and mobile devices.
Carcassonne Medieval in flavor, this German-made tile-based game introduces aspects of resource management as players populate their territory with “meeple” (“my people”) who perform functions like knight or farmer. Participants lay down tiles to represent forests, rivers, and roads, making the setting different every time the game is played. Accommodating two to five players equally well, the game can last the better part of an hour. It is wholly visual, requiring no complex language skills. Multiple expansions exist, but get the basic game first to build your audience.
Forbidden Island This Mensa Select winner is one of a new class of cooperative games: everyone wins, or everyone loses. Players assume specialist roles—pilot, explorer, messenger, navigator, engineer, or diver—that give them different abilities and must work together to retrieve four treasures from an island slowly sinking beneath the waves. The game plays best with four players, and you can wrap it up in half an hour. Game pieces include island tiles, cards, pawns, treasure figurines, and a water meter.
Pandemic Designed by Matt Leacock (also the designer of Forbidden Island), Pandemic is another cooperative game in which players have specialist roles—in this case, dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, or operations expert. They must combine their efforts and know-how to stem the tide of four deadly diseases that have broken out worldwide. The game takes about an hour to play and will fully engage the attention of two to four patrons. Given its medical theme, you might want to put it into play as the centerpiece or sidebar activity to a community information program during the winter flu season!
Settlers of Cataan Settlers is arguably the gateway game to carry one over the threshold from casual game player to enthusiast. Like Carcassone, it is a German-made Eurogame, and it boasts the perfect mix of dice-based luck and strategy. The resource-management elements are more central here, but the design ensures that everyone’s decisions and actions influence the final outcome: even beginning players won’t feel left out. There are numerous expansions to the standard game, which plays three or four and lasts up to 90 minutes. You could do worse than start a game club revolving around this game alone.
Tigris & Euphrates Another tile-based Eurogame, Tigris & Euphrates features a strong historical theme. Set in the ancient Fertile Crescent during the rise of the early city-states, it emphasizes territorial control and requires strategic thinking. Players become leaders of neighboring dynasties in the categories of politics, farming, religion, and trade. When these dynastic specialists meet up with others with similar aims, conflict ensues; specialists with differing aims will find it profitable to merge their efforts. As few as two can play, but four players are optimal; play lasts around an hour.
A lasting impression
Both board games and electronic games have a place in libraries, but board games are less subject to trendiness and quick obsolescence. The five highlighted here are among a vast variety of exceptional board games sure to engage beginning players and keep things fun at your library.
| Author Information |
| Liz Danforth (@LizDanforth), MLS, an Arizona-based part-time librarian who also works as a freelance game illustrator/designer/developer, writer, and library consultant, blogs at www.libraryjournal.com |
